Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen held a press conference at the Treasury Department ahead of the 2023 IMF/World Bank Spring Meetings on Tuesday, April 12.
She believes the United States is doing extremely well economically, with inflation coming down in a strong labor market, and Europe is doing better than was feared at the time of the last meeting.
Here’s the transcript:
REPORTER: Hi. I wanted to follow up on Alan's question. This morning, the IMF said the outlook for the global economy is anemic and that there was turbulence below the surface, but it sounds like you're more optimistic. Could you get into more detail about what you're seeing that the IMF may not be seeing and highlighting in terms of the outlook?
JANET YELLEN: So I do think the outlook is reasonable. It's certainly stronger, brighter than the last time we had the annual meetings in October.
Global growth projections are higher than they were at that time. We're seeing diminished inflationary projections and diminished inflation in some parts of the world. Commodity prices have eased. Supply chain snarls are being resolved.
The global financial system has generally proven quite resilient. As I mentioned, the United States is doing extremely well economically, with inflation coming down in a strong labor market, and Europe is doing better than was feared at the time of our last meeting.
So. I wouldn't overdo the negativism, negativism about the global economy. I think countries have proven resilient. A number of emerging market, lower-income countries continue to show resilient growth.
Some of them are benefiting from the improvement in their terms of trade, and they have built up buffers and taken strong macroeconomic policy actions. So I think we should be more positive. Of course there are risks.
Many of them relate to Russia's war against Ukraine and the global outlook. I think the single best thing that we could do to improve the global outlook would be to end that barbaric war. But I think the outlook is reasonably bright.
